Michael Sokolove does a fair job in portraying the former Denton congressman and majority leader’s second act as the lead organizer of the conservative protest movement. Many on the other side properly ask where all the Tea Partiers were when the Bush Administration and a Republican Congress were running up huge deficits. I admire Armey because he was fighting his own party every step of the way, as this Salon piece from 2004 shows.
In the New York Times article, Armey refers to “those nitwits who took over after we left.” He means Tom DeLay, Dick Cheney (“Deficits don’t matter”), and Karl Rove, whose political strategy consisted of (a) paying for two wars on a national-debt credit card, and (b) trying to create a “permanent Republican majority” by buying off large segments of the population with massive entitlements like the Medicare prescription bill, which Armey fought against. Give the guy credit for consistency back when opposition made him an outcast in his own party. To my mind, that makes him worth listening to now.
Tidbit: Much as I like Armey, it’s also interesting to find out that his protesting earns a salary of $550,000 a year. Wowza.
